Battle Scars
by SilentSpeaker13
Summary: Yuugi's just gotten his soul back from the Seal of Orichalcos, but his other half is having a hard time dealing with the guilt. Light puzzleshipping; R/R enjoy!


**AN: First things first, I don't own Yu Gi Oh! or its characters. Second, if you're wondering, if takes place right after Yuugi got his soul back from the whole Seal business. And if you think Yami is kinda ooc, my reasoning is that it's the wash out from the whole ordeal. Anyone who goes through that much emotional crap usually has to deal with the fallout, even when it's all resolved. **

**BTW: if you want to know the song I listened to (on repeat) while writing this, it's "Mononoke Hime" on the symphony version of the Mononoke Hime soundtrack.**

**P.S. If you read Misconstrued (ok that's happy and this is angsty but there's a possibility...I hope) the next (probably final) chap is on it's way; currently it's at page 6, my guess is it'll be at least 9-10 pages long. Also, thank you to EVERYONE who has reviewed a story or will (read: please) review this one and a special shout out to lalunaticscribe for faving like 3 0r 4 of my stories rapid fire, and Canon Corrupter, who is more than welcome (and encouraged :-p ) to "story stalk" me ;). OK, done being a windbag. **

**Read, review, and, most importantly, enjoy!**

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><p>"<em>Denial, conflict, ambivalence toward awakening...They're symptoms of unconscious escapism borne out of guilt. Your soul shudders at its own self-blame." -Angel Sanctuary OVA<em>

When Yuugi awoke it wasn't in his bed as it should have been. No. This bed was different from the one that lay in his bedroom over the game shop below. But still it was his bed; he knew this as his mind regained thoughtful consciousness. Familiar, but strange. His soul room.

Why was he here?

Something was wrong.

Something had unwittingly called the boy to awaken here. It did not take long for him to realize what.

A great and sudden shudder shook the walls of his soul room; books and games crashed to the ground, plaster chipped and fell like ash, a loud rumble broke the still air.

"Mou hitori no boku!"

Without another thought Yuugi leapt from his bed and ran to the door, deftly avoiding the toys underfoot along the way, though so few remained now. One door was thrown open right before another followed suit.

"Mou hitori no boku!"

The shaking was even worse in Pharaoh's room, radiating from the unseen epicenter. Chunks of stone overhead crumbled and collided with the stone floor below.

"Mou hitori no boku! Mou hitori no boku!"

Yuugi ran forward, calling as he went and praying that his desire to see the Nameless Pharaoh would guide him faithfully. But it seemed that he was stopped after every few steps as heavy stones rained down, threatening to crush him. A fear both his own and another's filled him like poison. Pharaoh's very mind was collapsing. He had to hurry, he had to save him. Both of them.

It took several different paths in the labyrinth, but only one door, to find the Nameless Pharaoh. Yuugi placed one hand over his heart and the other on the door's handle, praying and reassuring himself that the certainty he felt proved correct.

A violent swing of the heavy door shed light into a pitch-black room, revealing the truth.

In the darkness was a large bed, much too large for the one man twisted within the sheets covering it. In the dead center of the bed a tormented figure lay twitching and writhing, legs and arms spread as limbs grasped at the empty space. It was as though even his limbs had realized the bed that they occupied was far too expansive and void.

"Mou hitori no boku!"

Though Yuugi shouted as he ran the other did not wake. Instead he continued to strain under an invisible force and, as Yuugi nearly reached him, moaned and murmured quietly. The shock waves here were not so great, but it was certainly from Pharaoh that all of the horrible energy was radiating.

"Mou hitori no boku."

At his soft words the face he stood over only contorted in further agony. The walls shook with a pain so great that Yuugi jumped over the sleeping form to protect it from the debris. Yuugi turned to look behind him only to see the walls and ceiling shake and shudder as they cracked and started to crumble with a great groan under the violent strain. Another wave and surely they would fall over the exit. They would be trapped within the tortured pharaoh's mind forever. There was no time.

Already over the prone form Yuugi went to straddle his companion's waist and grasped firmly at the other's shoulders. He shook him harshly.

"Mou hitori no boku! Mou hitori no boku! Wake up, mou hitori no boku! You have to wake up!"

"A-aibou?"

The shaking began to quiet.

"Aibou!"

Yuugi was forcefully pulled down against a bare chest and wrapped in an embrace so tight it pushed the air from his lungs.

"Aibou, aibou, aibou..."

Each word was said slowly as it was repeated again and again. It was a prayer, an apology, a thank you, all laced with unimaginable pain. The words were said in a tone so unlike Pharaoh's own, hushed and fearful, colliding against one another until each word muddled into one.

Wetness touched Yuugi's cheek against the bare chest. Pharaoh's tears fell into one another and formed a stream, each wet drop falling to his own skin and the boy held under his chin as he clutched at him tightly. The broken man's hold was one of crazed desperation. Yuugi couldn't have left even if he had wanted to.

"Mou hitori no boku."

Was it a question or a statement? Yuugi wasn't quite sure himself, Pharaoh's face was turned down too far to see anything but his tears. Still, Yuugi didn't move. He tried once more.

"Mou hitori no boku."

"Aibou?"

The hold lightened in surprised realization only to tighten again with firm determination. The last tremors faded and the air stilled once more. All was once again filled with the terrible silence that the soul room provided.

"Mou hitori no boku? What happened?"

The Pharaoh still would not look at him, but only pulled the boy in his grasp closer to himself. He held him like he was trying to force Yuugi's soul to merge with his own.

"I had a dream aibou. A terrible dream. First I betrayed your trust, betrayed _you_, and then I lost you for so long..."

"Mou hitori no boku-"

"And then, and then I saw you again, but you were so different, so angry and disappointed in me, as disgusted with me as I was with myself. But you forced me to defeat you in a duel, just so that the doubt in my own mind would be cleared, at the cost of your very life."

"Mou hitori-"

The voice, which had been speaking quietly dazed, reached a near shout.

"And then I had to fight against you again. I had to destroy you to save you, to save everyone! You told me to destroy you aibou! Only...I failed and I fell into darkness. All I could feel was your anger, your shame in me. But, it wasn't a dream, was it? Those things happened aibou."

The pharaoh's words ended softly, his grip fell nearly slack. With a squirm Yuugi pulled himself away from the shocked spirit, whose arms twitched in longing to reclaim him but restrained themselves despondently.

"Mou hitori no boku."

Yuugi wrapped his own arms tightly back around the dimming spirit of darkness. He pressed his face against the other's bare chest and felt the body go stiff with upset. The taller spirit did not embrace him now, but watched him with a curious sort of bewilderment.

"Yuugi..."

"Those things all happened Pharaoh, but I don't hate you. I could never hate you, mou hitori no boku. You've learned from your mistakes, you've left your arrogance and the darkness of your heart behind you. I could never hate you for that."

"Aibou-"

"Shh, mou hitori no boku, come on."

Like a mother leading a toddler Yuugi crawled off his other self's lap and pulled him along behind him with intertwined fingers. He slid off the bed and paused as their connected arms reached the breadth of their width, allowing the other to follow suit. With a turned head he let the other wrap his bare frame clumsily within his sheets as he silently moved after his hikari half. When their arms came closer together and their hands fell at his side, Yuugi looked back to give the other a warm, tired, but heartfelt smile. The Nameless Pharaoh's attempted smile was only a confused and dazed look of startled sadness, but the contortions of worry and fear seemed to smooth some, if only slightly, under the calm gaze of Yuugi's eyes.

Wordlessly Yuugi pulled the pharaoh along behind him, out of the bedroom of his soul room and past the passageways and paths where chunks of stone littered the floor, evidence of his mind's disturbed state. Yuugi lead his other self brusquely, not allowing him to focus on the damage his suffering had caused or threatened Yuugi with. The kingdom-less pharaoh filed behind him like a lost child, nearly the most vulnerable that Yuugi had ever seen him. His resolve hardened all the more.

"Aibou..."

There was slight resistance against his tugging when they reached the doorway of the yami's soul room; his weight fell back and away from the insistent, yet gentle, pulling of his lighter half's hand. The hikari spoke only with his actions, giving one hard pull in command and finally persuading the other to follow him once more. In a few short steps they approached the next door, lying in wait for them.

He paused at the door to his own soul room only to push it further open as they entered. Yuugi knew that the other was looking around the room as they crossed the threshold and briefly hoped that the changes he himself had noticed before would go unseen by his companion. Though he knew it was hard not to notice how clear the path to his bed had become.

"It looks different...There are fewer toys," the dark spirit whispered.

Without looking back at the figure whose hand had stiffened within his own he nodded. "It's been like that since...I came back." Yuugi stopped as his other half refused to move once more. They stood silently for a moment in the imaginary bedroom, halfway between the door and the bed that looked larger and darker than it once had.

"Aib-...Yuugi..."

Yuugi shook his head resolutely. The Seal of Orichalcos had change him, changed them. But reliving what had happened would do no good for either one of them. What had happened, had happened. The past could not be changed, and they both had to deal with that fact.

"Mou hitori no boku," he turned and spoke, quietly but with the same authority as when he had confronted his other half in the Stone Wilderness. "We can't change what happened, mou hitori no boku. We're both here now and we're both going to be okay. That's what matters Pharaoh, nothing else matters right now, just you and me here together."

"Aibou, I-"

"Come on," with firm tenderness the pharaoh was pulled by his small partner to the bed tucked against the wall, only resisting for a brief second when he was pulled down to join the other after his partner had already climbed back into bed.

The spirit of the Nameless Pharaoh could only lie tensely as Yuugi grabbed the sheets and blankets and pulled them up to cover them both. Just as the restless spirit thought the other would turn away from him, his partner pushed himself further up the bed and grabbed him by the shoulders. Yuugi pulled the pharaoh against him and just held him there tightly; not with the desperate fear with which the pharaoh had clung to him earlier, but with authoritative comfort, refusing to let the tormented one suffer in solitude.

A faint touch of red colored the pharaoh's cheeks despite his pain. With their proximity was so close and his naked, vulnerable frame under his tangled sheet, he could feel a blazing warmth begin to heat him. He listened to Yuugi's heartbeat as it grew louder and softer with each lungful of air. His cheek felt perfect against the worn cloth of Yuugi's pajama top, sternum and flesh were better than any pillow he could have imagined. Still, determined to make himself suffer, he resisted.

"Yuugi-"

"Shh," Once more the pharaoh was silenced and pulled closer as he tried to lightly push away from the warm form of his partner's soul. The pharaoh, who had finally reached the full capacity of exertion, caved and crumbled to the comfort and desire. With shaky hands he wrapped his arms around the teen and buried his face into the other's clothed chest. Hot tears dampened the cotton underneath him.

"Shh, it's okay mou hitori no boku. You're okay and I'm okay. It's alright now. You saved everyone, you saved me. You saved yourself. It's all going to be fine now, mou hitori no boku, just sleep."

Soothing hands had gone to cradle the pharaoh's head; one affectionately stroked his hair over and over, running cool fingers over his scalp. A warmth he had never known before he met his aibou filled his belly to the brim and overflowed to fill every piece of him. Without question, this was the feeling they called 'love'. Suddenly he felt very sleepy resting against his aibou's clothed chest, the rhythm of heartbeat and breath creating a pleasant lullaby as it whisked him off to a land of peaceful dreams.

In his arms Pharaoh slept, but Yuugi did not stop running his finger's through the other's hair. Though

tear tracks still stained his cheeks, the contortions and lines of pain had been erased from the spirit's face as he fell into slumber. At last the pharaoh was safe from himself.

Yuugi looked up at the contents of his soul room. It certainly had changed, it was impossible for him not to notice. Very few toys littered the ground, some were placed on a shelf like a display, but many had just disappeared altogether. There were more books now, and pictures, that filled the space, and he stared, sadly, at the closet door directly across from the bed. The door had not been there before, and he knew exactly what it contained. Try as he might, the memories of pain, betrayal, sadness, emptiness, and an anger he had never known before, would never leave him; he knew that. But he also knew why they were placed in the closet and not crowding his room with their heavy burden. To forgive and let go and move on took an unimaginable amount of strength, but he had done it, and so those memories, those feelings, though they would never be erased, would stay as mere wisps in the back of his mind, safely dealt with and stored away.

Yuugi sighed and pressed the pharaoh closer against his own body. To forgive and let go so that he could bring comfort to the one who was suffering still, the very one who had caused him such great pain, surely this was the feeling they called 'love'.

Yuugi curled around the figure in his embrace. He buried his face into hair and pressed his lips against it. Finally he let himself drift off into his own sleep.

Two figures huddled into one another, relieving one another from the weight of the world and sharing the pain of the burden. Most definitely this was the feeling called 'love'.

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><p><strong>Thanks for reading, I promote reviews! Oh, also, shameless self promotion, if you wanna check out my crappy Yu Gi Oh! AMV, "Monsters", profile name: ThexWxIsxSilent .comwatch?v=2GXkD9nOIOs (btw, Windows Movie Maker sucks)**


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